Hampton Roads volunteers set up their smart phones along the beach at King-Lincoln Park during a "Catch the King" training session on Thursday, Sept. 28, 2017. Volunteers can download the "Sea Level Rise" application onto their smartphones and on the morning of November 5th, use the app to trace the high tide line from varying locations. The data will be collected and used to help scientists, educators and community leaders better understand the risks of a rising tide.

Hampton Roads volunteers set up their smart phones along the beach at King-Lincoln Park during a "Catch the King" training session on Thursday, Sept. 28, 2017. Volunteers can download the "Sea Level Rise" application onto their smartphones and on the morning of November 5th, use the app to trace the high tide line from varying locations. The data will be collected and used to help scientists, educators and community leaders better understand the risks of a rising tide.

Dave MayfieldThe Virginian-Pilot

Joe Fudge / Daily Press file photo

Living Shorelines on Mellon Street in Phoebus. Grass and wetlands are a defense against both flooding and pollution.

Living Shorelines on Mellon Street in Phoebus. Grass and wetlands are a defense against both flooding and pollution. (Joe Fudge / Daily Press file photo)

In Hampton Roads, like coastal communities all over the world, the tides are coming in.

And in. And in.

Sea levels are rising. Tidal flooding is increasing. And though we breathe collective sighs of relief each times monster storms like Harvey and Irma rampage elsewhere, most of us know deep down that it's just a matter of time before we take a direct hit.

Our risk from the water around us will keep growing.

Yet, there's still so much we don't know about the tides that bind us.

The Virginian-Pilot and media partners at the Daily Press, WHRO Public Media and WVEC-TV are teaming up in an effort this fall to help improve our understanding of high tides. We're inviting you to join us.

It's a citizen-science crowdsourcing project, and a fairly unique one. In no other community – in the U.S., at least – have so many media organizations teamed up to tackle the tides. And never before have hundreds of people been asked to go out and measure a single tide event. That's what we have in mind on the morning of Sunday Nov. 5 across Hampton Roads.

It will be built around documenting what's known as an astronomical high tide. In essence, that's the highest predicted tide of the year if wind, rain and everything else except the positions of the earth, sun and moon – and their gravitational effects – are taken out of the equation.

It's often referred to as the king tide.

You might think of it as an opportunity to peer through a window into our not-too-distant future. Some scientists say that future everyday low tides could be higher than this year's king tide half a century from now. That's if sea level rise forecasts at the upper end of the range of predictions prove accurate.

When this year's king tide arrives Nov. 5 on the heels of a full moon, we're aiming to be ready with an army of folks who'll deploy across the region. With smartphones in hand. And with one assignment: to measure where the tide crests.

The peak will depend on where in the region you're walking a water line that day: It's predicted to arrive at Lynnhaven Inlet in Virginia Beach at 9:13 a.m., Sewells Point in Norfolk at 9:28, the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth at 9:34, Deep Creek in Chesapeake around 9:50, the Kings Highway Bridge in Suffolk at 10:24, the Kingsmill resort near Williamsburg at 11:29, to cite a few examples.

The high tide on the morning of Nov. 5 almost certainly will be different than what's now predicted – at Sewells Point, for example, 3.42 feet above what's known as "mean lower low water." Some weather variables, especially how hard the wind's blowing and in what direction, will determine whether the tide goes above or below predicted levels.

First, he pushed in some ear plugs and cranked up a geoprobe corer that rattled off like a jackhammer. Then he studied a sediment core sample that...

Still, scientists say, it's likely there will be at least minor widespread flooding across Hampton Roads as the tide is nudged higher than normal by the alignment of the earth, moon and sun.

Our volunteer leaders, Tide Captains, will be in charge of making sure you know where you should be Nov. 5. And they'll be asked to assure you're up to speed on the phone app you'll use to do the measurements. It was developed by Norfolk-based Concursive Corp. for the nonprofit group Wetlands Watch.

Skip Stiles, executive director of Wetlands Watch, said that Hampton Roads is filled with keen observers of the tides, but much of their knowledge has been untapped by science. The app is intended to help fill the gap with a GPS-based system that turns every anecdotal observation into a scientifically valid measurement.

"We harvest this native knowledge, crowd-source the entire region," Stiles said, "then neighborhood by neighborhood we can build a comprehensive map of where it floods, and better understand which storms cause which kind of flooding."

The data and photos collected through Catch the King will be publicly available for you to review, and should be useful to many others, especially scientists at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and others who are trying to build models for predicting tidal flooding. Emergency planners from across the region say the information will help them get a better handle on flooding risks, too.

Derek Loftis, an assistant research scientist at VIMS, is the chief science liaison for the project. His Ph.D. dissertation focused on street-level flood forecasting in New York City during Hurricane Sandy, and he's been involved in numerous flood-forecasting initiatives in Hampton Roads.

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The control room watches as the low-speed wind-tunnel runs up to test a revolutionary supersonic aircraft that will incorporate "Quiet Supersonic Technology" allowing it to fly over populated areas Thursday October 25, 2018. The technology being developed will be used by commercial designers to build supersonic passenger aircraft.

The control room watches as the low-speed wind-tunnel runs up to test a revolutionary supersonic aircraft that will incorporate "Quiet Supersonic Technology" allowing it to fly over populated areas Thursday October 25, 2018. The technology being developed will be used by commercial designers to build supersonic passenger aircraft.

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The control room watches as the low-speed wind-tunnel runs up to test a revolutionary supersonic aircraft that will incorporate "Quiet Supersonic Technology" allowing it to fly over populated areas Thursday October 25, 2018. The technology being developed will be used by commercial designers to build supersonic passenger aircraft.

The control room watches as the low-speed wind-tunnel runs up to test a revolutionary supersonic aircraft that will incorporate "Quiet Supersonic Technology" allowing it to fly over populated areas Thursday October 25, 2018. The technology being developed will be used by commercial designers to build supersonic passenger aircraft.

CAPTION

William & Mary biology students Lillian Parr, Chengwu Shen, Jessica Laury, Xiangyi Fang, Stephanie Do and Yashna Verma are competing in the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition in Boston over the weekend. They are taking a design for a circuit that can decode or translate the signals that cells use to communicate.

William & Mary biology students Lillian Parr, Chengwu Shen, Jessica Laury, Xiangyi Fang, Stephanie Do and Yashna Verma are competing in the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition in Boston over the weekend. They are taking a design for a circuit that can decode or translate the signals that cells use to communicate.

Grafton High senior Yenna Chu was awarded first place in a NASA science competition involving microgravity and an object interacting with water. Her designs were sent to the NASA Glenn facility in Ohio for testing.

Grafton High senior Yenna Chu was awarded first place in a NASA science competition involving microgravity and an object interacting with water. Her designs were sent to the NASA Glenn facility in Ohio for testing.

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Teams of naturalist spread out around New Quarter Park to participate in a national butterfly count.

Teams of naturalist spread out around New Quarter Park to participate in a national butterfly count.